Idle Cave Miner

Released Dec 2023

Idle Cave Miner is an idle game about crafting items, mining gems, and building your team of miners. Prestige, craft, and travel to other mines to increase your strength to dig deeper, and find what lurks below.

80% positive · 1,241 reviews

Done

All announced content has been released

Medium confidence

Done

All announced content has been released

Medium confidence

Where to get it

Free on Steam

Steam Free

Evaluation

Idle Cave Miner launched on December 7, 2023 and has received a steady stream of feature updates through mid-2024. The developer (Pedro at Cold Hours) transitioned the game from paid to free-to-play in April 2024, and shipped several feature patches adding new content through version 1.11.2 on August 26, 2024. On June 5, 2025, the developer announced Idle Cave Miner 2, a full sequel currently in pre-release development. Crucially, this announcement frames ICM2 as the next chapter — the developer reflects on the original game as a completed learning experience ("4 years and 1.5 million downloads later") and directs the community's attention forward to the sequel. No further updates to the original game have been posted since August 26, 2024 — nearly ten months before the sequel announcement, and over a year before today's date. There are no announced DLC, expansions, or roadmap items for the original game. The store description mentions daily, weekly, and monthly missions, which are recurring engagement systems common to free-to-play idle games — but the developer has not described a live content rotation or monetized seasonal cycle for the Steam version. Given the complete absence of developer communication about the original game since August 2024, and the sequel announcement effectively signaling that the developer's full attention has moved on, the original Idle Cave Miner appears to have reached the end of its active development. The last shipped update (version 1.11.2, August 26, 2024) is the practical endpoint of the game's content.

Evidence

Developer announces Idle Cave Miner 2 as a full sequel, reflecting on the original as a 4-year journey now concluded. No future updates to the original game are mentioned.

news post · Jun 5, 2025 source development ending

high

Version 1.11.2 shipped — the last known update to the game. No developer communication about the original game has appeared since this date.

news post · Aug 26, 2024 source content shipped

medium

Media

Details

Developer

Cold Hours

Publisher

Cold Hours

Achievements

Platform

Windows, macOS, Linux

Controller

—

Steam Deck

Playable

Players

Single-player

Idler Incremental Mining Management Crafting Pixel Graphics 2D Resource Management Simulation Cute Casual Deckbuilding Colorful Stylized Destruction

About this game

IDLE CAVE MINER FEATURES:

Smelt, Craft, and Refine Ores:

Craft cool new Items to mine deeper than ever and find new rare ores and gems!
Upgrade your forges to increase their speed and efficiency when smelting rare ores or refining beautiful gems!
Use the items you crafted to permanently boost the stats of your team of miners!

Build your own team of Miners:

Unlock cool and unique new miners to mine for you and help you progress deep within the mines!
Upgrade your miners with items you crafted to take them to the next level of mining efficiency!
Idle away as your miners work for you, giving you profits you've never seen before!

Multiple Mines:

The mine upgrades with you, the further down you go, the more the mine shifts to accommodate new unique and fun environments!
Unique mines to explore, each with their own resources for you to obtain, whether those are rare ores to be smelted or unique gems to be refined!
Farm these mines to get resources to become stronger than ever and progress in the main mine, giving you access to new and interesting new ores and gems!

Endless upgrades:

Upgrade everything about your favorite miners, building an increasingly strong team to progress further than you've gone before!
Prestige to receive powerful rewards that allow you to go deeper than ever into the unknown depths of the mines!
Gather permanent upgrades that remain with you when you prestige, allowing you to breeze through what was previously impossible!

Lots of missions and achievements:

Complete fun achievements to unlock cool rewards!
Participate in daily, weekly and monthly missions that give you increased rewards based on their difficulty level!
Check your game's stats at any moment to view your overall progress and other fun statistics!